


Late Night Call

by Thatkidsshoes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, POV Molly Hooper, POV Sherlock Holmes, Shipping, all the feels, pairing - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:38:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6113944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkidsshoes/pseuds/Thatkidsshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She did matter the most. He’d made so sure to distance himself from her. He even had insulted her quite spectacularly in front of Moriarty himself to establish the idea that Molly was of little importance. He couldn’t bear the thought of Molly in danger, a danger that he had created himself. So when the time came that he needed her. The walls he had always placed around himself crumbled just enough that the worry that made him feel sick to his stomach could be seen by Molly. Molly Hooper, the girl who saw. The girl who noticed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Night Call

Molly Hooper wasn’t exactly sure why she was at work after such a…horrid experience. She contemplated this as the saw blade ground into the human skull before her releasing a small spray of blood. It wasn’t like she didn’t like her work. She just thought that maybe this wasn’t the best place to work out her stress. The blade cut through the bone just fine and she could finally remove the brain and place it in the cold bowl next to her.  

            She quickly grabbed the scalpel surrounded by an array of tools and sliced a neat line down the center of the torso. Sure it had been a rough patch. Couples had those. It was normal wasn’t it? Pealing the skin back from the muscle she thought back to the last few days. Tom had seemed a little distant. Not as forth coming as he usually was during dinner. She’d asked about his day and he just shrugged and asked about hers.

Molly did enjoy his company. She did enjoy the way he laughed when she did something funny, or the way he would smile at her when she said something witty. Emptying the contents of the stomach into a jar reminded her of the wine they had had. It tasted a bit sour, not enough of the usually fruity taste that she was fond of. She’d known something was off with the way he was jittering and stuttering about.  

            She frowned at the weight of the liver. She’d asked him what was wrong but Tom had never been quick with words. Usually he just stuttered about until he got to the point of what he’d been trying to say.

            Molly drummed her fingers against the cool metal table her eyes narrowing in annoyance. He’d broken the engagement. With angry movements she snatched the oversized clippers from the work table and set about snipping the rib cage.  

            In love with someone else?

Chop.

            And who was she in love with? That antisocial sociopath who only cared only about his next case? Ridiculous!

Chop.  

She was going to marry that _stupid_ boy!

Chop.

In less than a _month!_

Chop. Chop.

Did he have _any_ idea how many plans they had to cancel?

Chop.

The apology letters?

Chop.

How he’d taken her heart and thrown it in a _blender!_

Molly slammed the clippers down on the table a frustrated growl escaping her clenched teeth. Why was this happening? She was finally settling down, a nice man hanging from her arm, someone who treated her how she deserved, someone that made her happy, and for _once_ wasn’t a raving lunatic. Tom had been different. The fading tan line on her finger seemed to mock her. Two weeks ago was the wedding day. She’d spent her would be wedding night sitting in front of her window all day staring at happy couples and wishing the earth would open and swallow them whole and send them straight to hell.   

Molly hung her head staring at the corpse in front of her. If anything this was her sloppiest autopsy. The ribs had been cut at different lengths. Instead of cutting the skin nicely from the muscle she’d practically torn it off. The skull was another matter entirely. She hated her life.

A familiar ring sounded in the stillness. Glancing at the clock on the wall she noticed it was quite late at night. Almost one thirty. She sighed and took off her latex gloves trying to ignore the empty feeling on her finger and walked over to her phone. A new text message shone on her screen.

_Come to Baker Street as soon as possible. –SH_

She nearly dropped her phone. He was texting her now? Couldn’t he wait until after her emotional break down? Such as in the morning when she had had some type of sleep that week? Couldn’t he wait till after she felt a little _less_ violent?

Her phone sang again.

_Now if possible –SH_

Before she could even contemplate the text message another came.

_Need help –SH_

Sometimes she hated him. With a heavy sigh and a reluctant reply Molly cleaned up her mess and packed up her things. She went to the nearest sink and mirror to clean any possible blood from her face before freshening up.

Freshening up? Why would she need to do that? She paused halfway through and dropped her hands to her sides. Molly wasn’t going to go to Sherlock’s flat looking her best at, she glanced at the clock, two o’clock in the morning. In fact, she was quite cross with him. It was his fault that she wasn’t married and on her honeymoon.

Ugh, her honeymoon. They had planned to go to Italy. See the sights, discover the art. Travel the great cities. She was supposed to be sleeping in a hotel right across from a famous cathedral this very night.

_Molly, why do you keep doing this to yourself?_

With yet another sigh Molly adjusted her coat and scarf before heading out of the morgue and into the night of London.

 

 

Mrs. Hudson dressed in a robe and covering her mouth with a yawn let Molly in the door of 221B.

“Sorry to wake you, Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock said he needed help.”

She shook her head. “No worries, Dear. He’s been staring at that wall of his for a few hours now and hasn’t moved since. I’m afraid he’s forgotten to eat again.”

“Don’t worry Mrs. Hudson. I’ll be sure to get some food in him and make sure he gets some sort of sleep.”

Molly sent Mrs. Hudson off to bed and made her way up familiar stars. Under normal circumstance Molly doubted she would have been able to get Sherlock to sleep a wink. A case that usually left him puzzled left him oblivious to all the needs of a human until he solved the mystery before him. But tonight, Molly felt up for a fight. She’d been furious with Tom for too long and unfortunately, Sherlock was about to bear the brunt of her anger.

She came to his door and there he stood. Sherlock Holmes, detective extraordinaire, feet firmly planted on the couch cushions, hands closed together fingers covering his lips and just touching his nose. After a few seconds he folded his hands and narrowed his eyes at the order-less mass of documents, articles, and photographs on the wall. His suit jacket had been thrown to the side, his tight purple shirt accenting the lines of his muscles along with his black slacks, and his hair a nice curl. Not that she was paying attention or anything.

“You needed something?”

The sound of her voice snapped him instantly out of whatever room in his “mind palace” he’d locked himself in. He looked to her hands falling down to his side. “Skulls, how much do you know about them?” Sherlock stepped down from the couch waltzing over to a skull placed on the cluttered desk.

“Skulls,” she repeated staying in the doorway. He couldn’t be serious. He knew as much as she did about something in this area and yet he was asking for her help? What could he possibly need her for?

“Yes, skulls. Now tell me about this one.” He held up the item in his hand slightly wiggling it when she didn’t come forward immediately.

She sighed tossing her bag on the couch and taking the yellowed bone into her hands. She studied it for a few moments rattling off a few facts and taking note of the slight indentation near the temple and the spider glass pattern over the back of the skull.

After Molly finished her examination she handed Sherlock back the skull.

“My sentiments exactly,” he told her before facing the wall

She felt her eye twitch in irritation. “Then why ask for my help?”

“Because it doesn’t make any sense! Where is the pattern? Why would he be killed in this matter and left here? And where are the other bodies?”

Molly listened to him ramble off several different questions before asking one of her own. “Where’s John?”

“Date night with Mary,” he said absently walking closer to the wall.  A wall riddled with holes, most notably the bullet holes in the yellow smiley face that had never once been covered up by any of his cases.

She glared at the ceiling. Of course. John wasn’t here so Molly was his second choice to throw ideas and theories at. She rolled her eyes at the ceiling before storming off into the kitchen. She had promised Mrs. Hudson to get some sort of food into Sherlock’s stomach so she intended to do just that.

He continued to stare at the wall arms loose at his side his head shifting now and then as it did as he searched the information in his mind for anything that he could have missed.

Surprisingly Molly found the fridge well stocked. One shelf had been dedicated to Sherlock’s bizarre experiments while the rest of the fridge had been filled with food. Mary must have made sure that Sherlock could actually eat a decent meal when he remembered to eat. She took off her coat and scarf leaving her in nothing but her long sleeved V-neck sweater. She ran her fingers through her pony tail before setting about her task.

It wasn’t long before she reemerged from the kitchen with a plate in her hand with an omelet and toast. She herself was quite starving and had left her own plate on the kitchen table with a tall glass of orange juice next to it.

“Sherlock, come and eat.”

He continued to stare at the wall his eyes flickering to and fro as multiple theories arose only to be shut down and replaced by others.

“Sherlock,” she tried again stepping closer.

He continued to stand still oblivious to her voice.

Oh she’d had enough of this. Marching to his side she took his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her.

Surprised flashed across his face until multicolored eyes stared at her in shock.

“You,” she said forcefully. “Eat.” Dropping the plate into his hands she stomped back into the kitchen and sat stiffly at the table angrily eating the food she had prepared. Slowly, never taking his eyes from her he sat in his chair and absently ate the meal in his hands while studying her body language. He’d done something wrong. He was sure of that. As to what it was he had yet to figure out. He noticed the small splash of blood behind her ear indicating she had been at work. The smudge of black ink on her pinky knuckle told him she had been writing quite a lot, apology letters judging by the circumstances. He took into account the slight darkening under her eyes telling him that she had slept little in the past few weeks. Sherlock’s grip tightened slightly in anger. At any rate, he chose to assume that Molly was not angry with him but he had become the last straw.

Gingerly he placed the plate on the table next to him before slowly approaching Molly. She noticed the movement but made no move to acknowledge him. She was angry with him and she couldn’t figure out why. He hadn’t done anything to make her mad. In fact, he’d been just as she had expected him to be. Sherlock.

“Molly…” he began. And just like that she made him a loss for words. How she continued to do this bothered him but he had never tried to figure out why. Which proved completely out of character for him but he shrugged it aside. She made him feel slightly awkward. Something he was not familiar with but was reluctantly getting used to where she was concerned.

“Have I done something to offend you?”

She sighed for what seemed like the millionth time that night and put her fork gently down next to the half-eaten omelet before her. “No, no you haven’t.”

He frowned slightly. He was sure he had done something wrong. Usually she could shrug off his antics but it seemed that this time she hadn’t been able to. According to her statement, he hadn’t done anything.

Sherlock sat down at the end of the table adjacent to her facing the wall fingers drumming nervously on the table top. He glanced down at his fingers. His movements instantly stopped. Why did he find himself so unsettled? This was Molly Hooper. He had no reason to feel so compromised.

His eyes studied her. She was stressed, hadn’t slept well in a long while, lately been quite angry. He deduced another several things he had been too far away to see before asking a question he knew the answer to.

“What is it?”

Her shoulders slumped forward losing their rigidity. She stared at the table top before her. After a few breathes she looked to him and answered his question. “Tom,” she said simple and a little brokenly.

Anger flashed through his eyes at the mention of the name. She stared at him in surprise. Molly had no idea that Sherlock was angry with her former fiancé. Why would Sherlock be angry? She knew that he didn’t like Tom which wasn’t much of a surprise considering that she could count the number of people Sherlock liked on one hand.

“Sherlock,” she began. Before she could get anything further he interrupted her.

“Tom is a fool,” he stated harshly.

“You think everyone is a fool,” Molly replied with a tired sigh.

He looked to the wall. “I believe normal people to be idiots that is a well-known fact and one that I state often but Tom, he, is a fool.”

Molly sat back in her chair finding slight amusement. “What’s the difference?”

He looked at her. “A fool is someone who does something completely idiotic for the entirely wrong reason. An idiot is someone like Anderson bumbling around without using a single functional part of his brain-“

Molly gave him that look that always effectively shut him up. “He spent two years blaming himself for your ‘death’.”

“Why would he? He had nothing to do with it.”

“Sherlock,”

He silenced himself.

Molly rested her chin in her hand. “So what is the point you are trying to get across?”

“Tom is a fool for letting you out of his grasp,” he said gaze fixing on the wall.

She started in surprise. Her thoughts screeched to halt and she nearly lost the bottom half of her jaw. “E-Excuse me?” she finally managed.

He turned those intense eyes on her as if peering into her very soul. She’d never been able to keep long periods of eye contact with him afraid that he would see far too much. But now, now she couldn’t look away.

“You, dear Molly Hooper, are far too unique and he let you slip right through his pathetic little fingers. The biggest mistake _Tom_ ,” he spat as if the word alone had become a great insult. “made, is the hurt he caused you, you the one who mattered most to me.”  
            She did matter the most. He’d made so sure to distance himself from her. He even had insulted her quite spectacularly in front of Moriarty himself to establish the idea that Molly was of little importance. He couldn’t bear the thought of Molly in danger, a danger that he had created himself. So when the time came that he needed her. The walls he had always placed around himself crumbled just enough that the worry that made him feel sick to his stomach could be seen by Molly. Molly Hooper, the girl who saw. The girl who _noticed._

It was as if she’d been struck in the stomach. He stared at her with those mutli-colored eyes, eyes that she’d never been sure of the color. When Sherlock became excited about a case his eyes seemed so blue. When he seemed to look at either Mrs. Hudson or John with any sort of affection those eyes appeared green. But now, as she stared so intently into those beautiful eyes she could see they were an incredible mixture of both, as if a galaxy had been hidden away within those all seeing eyes.

And he was seeing her, as she was. Molly Hooper. Molly Hooper who had just recently had her heart broken, Molly Hooper the scientist, Molly Hooper, the girl who mattered.

They stared at each other for what seemed like ages. It was like those eyes had captured her in a gaze that she could never escape, a gaze she never wanted to escape. 

He opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again. His fingers began to drum once again against the table top.

Abruptly Sherlock stood, take a few stiff paces away from the kitchen. He was an analytical man, very logical, his mind always working on overdrive He didn’t have time for these emotion they only hampered his thinking and yet…

These emotions seemed to be all he could possibly think about at the moment. The most exciting case he had had in weeks suddenly cast to the side, unimportant. He had stared into those dazzlingly brown eyes and it had taken him nearly ten minutes to work up the brain power required to move something as small as his gaze. What was wrong with him? A part of him knew exactly what had happened but he refused to acknowledge it.

“Sherlock?”

His thoughts derailed making him feel slightly dizzy. How did she do that? Half the time he was never aware when John left but the minute Molly said something he had to pay attention.

Molly felt a little concerned. Sherlock seemed to be shaken by something. It wasn’t like his normal moments where he abruptly stops in the middle of his sentence as his mind, always working in the background, finally makes a connection. It was as if his mind had a sudden shift in thought, one that he was not familiar with at all.

Molly stood and cocked her head to the side. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, fine,” he said a little too quickly.

“No you’re not, something’s wrong,”

He still didn’t turn to face her choosing instead to stare out the nearest window. “I wouldn’t exactly say something is ‘wrong’,” he replied.

“Then what is it?” she took a step closer. If she wanted to she could reach out and touch him.

He stiffened slightly. He wasn’t used to these kinds of bodily reactions. Reactions like the strange burn in his chest at the mention of Tom and the strange pinch whenever Molly smiled at him. It was foreign in the extreme. He had cast aside such emotions as these and had only recently come to accept them in matter such as caring for people. He showed genuine affection for John and Mrs. Hudson and even towards Molly. But this, this was an entirely new level he wasn’t prepared for.

“Sherlock, you can tell me you know.” She took another step closer, close enough that if she wanted to she could wrap her arms around his waist

He felt something shift inside of him. Something he didn’t know how to control. Something he could _never_ control and that alone scared him. He didn’t like it. He’d only ever been truly scared once before. Moriarty had put everyone he cared about in danger. But this fear proved different. A type of fear that frightened him in a completely different way.

“Sherlock?” Molly’s hand touched his back and his skin sparked and seemed to catch fire. He turned quickly to escape the touch. He would later see it as both a mistake and a revelation. That turn cost him what little control he had left over himself. For a moment he couldn’t think. He ran his fingers through his hair vigorously as if it would stimulate what functioning brain receptors he had left.

Molly flinched in surprise. She hadn’t meant to touch him. It had just happened. When he turned he was suddenly so close she felt as though she couldn’t breathe. And he was staring down out her with something…was that hunger in his eyes? She gasped slightly her lips parting.

He felt as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach. He stared down into those beautiful chocolate brown eyes before he gave up.

He ruffled his hair vigorously. “Fuck it,”

Sherlock grabbed her gorgeous face in his hands and kissed her full on the mouth hard, desperate, wild, and out of control. She melted in his hands her own grabbing a fist full of his shirt pulling him closer. So close. Heat seemed to melt her skin off her bones until she was utterly consumed by the fire that was Sherlock. His scent filled her nose until it was all she could smell. Her hands reached up to tangle in those dark locks. She met silk instead. Molly gripped the strands tightly and felt rather than heard him groan. A thrill ran down her spine. Never in a million years had Molly expected to have the man she’d been in love with to kiss her so…exquisitely. Never had she thought that it would be her that made him make those little sounds that let her know just how much she was affecting him. His arms encircled his waist and he lifted her off the ground molding their bodies together.

She was like a drug. Her taste exploded through his mouth seeming to short circuit his remaining brain function. He didn’t even have time to acknowledge the sensation before her slender, delicate fingers tangled in his hair. She pulled tightly and harsh tingles ran from his scalp to his toes. Her body was soft and warm beneath his hands responding to his movements, movements he was no longer in control of. She gasped and moaned under his touch bringing an excitement he had never known.

Eventually, like all things, the need for oxygen caused for lips to break apart reluctantly. Panting, eyes hooded mouth slightly apart, Sherlock Holmes slowly lowered Molly Hooper back to earth never taking his eyes off her. He couldn’t understand what had just happened. And quite possibly, he was never meant to understand. He was surprised to find that he, for once in his life, was okay with not knowing.

Molly reeled, her head resting against his chest feeling his racing heartbeat against her cheek. It was a dream. That’s all it could be. And yet here she stood, wrapped in his arms feeling safer than she had ever felt in all of her life. _My God,_ she thought.   

Molly, surprisingly, recovered her ability to speak first. “I think,” she said a little breathlessly tapping her finger against his muscled chest. “I’ll take those fish and chips now.”

Slowly a light that had never been in Sherlock’s eyes gleamed and a small smile graced his face. He rested his chin on her head and felt the beginnings of the greatest puzzle of his life come into being. “Fish and Chips it is then.”

 


End file.
